ii8 Ka Hana Kapa. 



But we must not let the waoke hurry us out of the orderly arrangement of our 

 material. While there are many trees in the tropical region of the Pacific that ma}- 

 furnish bark fibre, and still more in the other tropical regions where bark-cloth was 

 made, it will be wise to confine our studies mainly to those in the Pol3'nesian groups, 

 and more particularly to the known trees of the Hawaiian Islands, without, howeyer, 

 binding our pen too strictly when illustration is needed from other regions. 



First, of course, we must treat of the fibre-furnishing plants, and so extensiye 

 has been the search for fibres for other purposes than cloth-making in the old wa\-, 

 that it is not difficult to get information of these. When we pass from the fabric to 

 its decoration we are on a ground by no means so firm, for while the trees, shrubs, 

 yines and roots furnishing dj-es or paints are known by name, that is often all that we 

 do exactly know of the methods which made them useful; we haye with some of them 

 only "a speaking acquaintance". Nor does our list stop with the yegetable world ; 

 it includes also earths, both as ochres and as mud, which was doubtless a compound 

 of earthy and yegetable matter. Because our knowledge of these things is far from 

 complete we are not to drop the discussion, but courageously offer to our reader what 

 we think we know, honestly confessing our ignorance when it blocks the way, trying 

 all the while to interest others, who may know far more of this or that, to take up 

 the thread and spin it out as bright and fair as they ma}'. Why not experiment with 

 these plants; tr\- their bark, both of stem and of root; their leayes, their fruit; mace- 

 rate them and boil them, add mordants, whether oil, tannin or salts, and when we 

 haye done all these we do not know that the old Hawaiians used any of our processes. 

 The temptation to dabble in dyes is great, and curious and often amusing results 

 come of such experiments; but while we .sometimes get a color fairl}- matching the old 

 native dye, we find we can also get it in several other ways, and have come no nearer 

 to the actual old Hawaiian process. 



Of the perfumes so popular among the Hawaiians, man}- are used to scent 

 clothes of woven cloth at the present day in much the same way that they gave their 

 odor to correct the rather unpleasant smell of the raw kapa of the olden time. Certainly 

 some of the native popular perfumes are not pleasant to a European. 



While it would not be well to turn a treatise on the making of bark-cloth into a 

 botanical text-book to any great extent, the labor in looking for this description or that 

 synonym is certainly an inducement to save the reader a part of this trouble by quoting 

 here such descriptions as are needful, or in some cases making modified descriptions 

 from the living plant, or the specimens in the herbarium of the Bishop Museum. 



